Microsoft is making its money by having a patent on concrete. Of course, it's all a smoke and mirrors show - and this is a great example. It's simultaneously a way to screw with open source through confusion and restrictive licensing, and to push it's characterization of open source as "viral." That particular language, prominent and oft-repeated, is the center of the M$ obsfucation strategy. The continual suggestion is that open source will "infect" your code, and eventually all code, making it impossible to sell code, thus destroying the economy.
It is this EULA that is truly viral - as soon as you click it you agree to put ridiculous and unwarranted restrictions on your ability to use the tools you want. Take this shit seriously - this is balls out, anti-competitive, monopolistic tactics.
>Besides not being surprised that the government >would spend its billion dollar defense network >on spying on the little guy, he pointed out how >amusing it was that all this energy is going >into protecting the government's crop insurance >stake while the farmer is slowly slipping into >oblivion.
"Spend it's billion dollar defense network spying on the little guy?!" Come on. Obviously the "government" did not say "we think this guy is going to commit insurance fraud, let's take pictures of his fields now and make sure he plowed them!" It's clear these pictures were taken as part of routine sweeps and later archives were pulled to check the facts. Agriculture and insurance and all the rest are complex and controversial issues without question, but presuming the facts are right, these guys were breaking the law in a way that would hurt honest farmers (by driving up the base cost of providing insurance). In the end insurance fraud costs everyone money at the benefit of a few crooks.
This and other knee-jerk, simplistic assertions ("the greens in CA successfully killed off electricity production," "using GMO as an excuse for nationalistic crop protection" - yeah, that's the whole story on these huge issues) unfortunately interfere with a generally sound assessment of problems with agriculture in this world, and your VERY good, relevant and timely point about supporting local agriculture. Many farms, particularly organic farms (so you can wait for REAL science on GMO rather than taking GMO-dependent industries' word on safety, and save the productivity of our limited soil resources to boot - it's been proven that conventional agricultural processes are destroying the value of topsoil, while organic processes can actually improve it) offer great deals on shares, where you can get fresh vegetables delivered often right to your door throughout the growing season. The added benefit is that they're usually much fresher, tastier and more gently handled than the mega-mart's "fresh" produce.
>It's not good to know that being watched will always work to someone else's advantage. Ah...
I disagree. First off, "you" are not being watched in this case - Great big giant pieces of land are. Not very personal, and in my opinion the Big Brother analogy is off base.
And if you were an HONEST farmer, this kind of thing would be to your advantage - crop insurance fraud end up costing every farmer money in increased premiums. When farmers experience catastrophic crop loss they NEED that insurance to survice economically. Fraud means higher premiums, lower profits for farmers, more expensive agricultural commodities for everyone, including you.
I'm no lover of government or insurance companies but I think it is in every honest person's interest that we can use existing technologies (these things are going to be taking pictures whether they're used for these purposes or not) to prevent things like insurance fraud.
Something that I think is worth considering, particularly for all you moral purists out there who are snootily insisting that this meaningless little business should have held the line and stood on principles, is that "X-Box" is a stupid name for a video game console and an even stupider name for a vaguely defined tech company. This is probably one of the best business decisions these people ever made...
Now, for anyone with the insane free time to drill this far down into a discussion they didn't participate in - here is a point. This weak, flawed, feeble little media "channel" called Slashdot can't possibly compete with the power and scope of a Clear Channel (you wanna gag go check out http://www.clearchannel.com ) but nonetheless, communication has occurred between two total strangers with some common thoughts and goals - despite misunderstanding, vitriol (on both sides) and a seemingly intractable set of problems.
The exciting thing about the internet, or even better simply networked computers in general, is this potential to blur the line between a broadcast and a personal conversation. The former aspect gives communication scope, power, and a life beyond the individual. The latter is a defense against government and corporate intrusion, and the homogenizing influence of broadcast media.
The point made by Chris that I most want to reiterate is that yes, Virginia, it CAN happen here too. Keep a hawks eye on any legislation that aims its rhetoric at obscenity on the internet, cracking and electronic intrusion, surveillance and terrorism. This is where the enemies of freedom will most likely attack our freedom to use this communication tool with the full protection of the first amendment and exploiting as much reach and scope as we can afford to control.
And a nice list of examples of actions an individual can take, too. It all seems like little things, but remember - big bastards like Microsoft would not be alternately belittling and demonizing stuff like open source if it wasn't such a danger to them.
I would love to hear one of these free market advocates justify what the loosening of restraints on station ownership has done to the world of commercial radio, but I doubt I will. Chris, I've saved your web link for later perusal as I am a songwriter and singer. Since you've given an e-mail I'd like to touch base with you perhaps about projects in self-publishing and internet radio I and friends are working on. Thanks for a lively discussion.
Muchos gracias for being such a clear example of the point I was trying to make.
There's nothing wrong with your facts - Other than your assumption, based on your obviously cursory asessment of what I actually said, that I don't understand the nature of the media environment in today's world. Yes, I am fully aware of the effects of the extension of copyright protections beyond the lifetime of individual creators, the overturning of rules preventing the ownership of large numbers of media outlets that made vile behemoths like Clear Channel possible, the dissapearance of the principle of separating content production from content distribution, the increasing consolidation of print and electronic media under the vast umbrellas of a few profit-driven corporate machines, and all the other forces consolidating mass media.
There is nothing in what I wrote to suggest that I'm not aware of these situations nor that I think the current media state is a good thing (I don't) nor that I don't believe the internet is in danger of a similar fate.
The use of the phrase "common market" was ill-chosen and obviously led you to the assumption that I'm advocating the viewpoint that the international wealth transfer system some laughingly refer to as a "free" market will insure parity in the media environment, and that I am against regulation because it will interfere with this market working correctly. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I am suggesting is that we have no choice but to take responsibility for creating alternatives and that we cannot rely on government (as it currently exists) or merely complaining about Big Business to remedy the situation. Our political leaders, corrupted by massive infusions of cash from the international cartels of shareholders that own the major multinationals, leashed to the lowest common denominator standards that create elections like our most recent presidential race (half the voters completely polarized between two mediocre candidates, the other half too sunk in self-involvement and apathy to even vote, are unable to do anything to stop the trends in media. And the businesses are owned by the wealthy and operated solely for their profit - we'll find no remedy there. Moreover, the succeed by virtue of the fact that they SELL their product. And while I fully agree that they succeed by virtue of an unfair advantage, reality is that they do succeed - they get people to consume their products (and don't tell me there are no alternatives - I haven't listed to a cumulative hour of commercial radio in the last five years).
We have to do it ourselves and we have to start in the context of the voices and venues we have. No, I can't start a major radio station. My voice here on little slashdot may be small, but look - it started this discussion. What I'm saying is that "magazines" like Feed and Suck failed by trying essentially to emulate both the methods and goals of corporatized media - and so failed by design. Big media is the way it is because of where it comes from, how it's created, and what it's made for. Small media has to strive to be something different, made in a different way, and for different purposes. We have to look at the models of things that work, not bemoan the fates of what didn't (Though we should learn from these fates).
I don't have the answers - I'm looking for them. I put it to you: what are your solutions for the problems you elucidate? You do a great job of painting a bleak picture, which I do NOT disagree with (despite my naivety, ignorance, and childishness). Yet despite your appeal to reality versus theory, you offer no solutions, no advice for going forward.
I would honestly (meaning literally honestly, not sarcastically honestly) like to hear your thoughts on how we can realistically change this situation - given the tools we actually possess right now. It seems like so many understand what's wrong, but don't know what to do about it - and you clearly understand (as so few do) that just voting for one of the two fat-cat approved political alternatives is not gonna make the nut. But we DO have a communication system in the internet which is fundamentally different from broadcast media yet which has potentially much greater power, and where as you point out we still have a chance to stake out standards that support a more diverse new media. But we need to get our heads together and figure out how.
Or perhaps you'd rather browse what I've written, stuff my complex opinions into some tiny box of whatever dogma you find particularly odious, and lightly insult me a bit - because God knows the politics of adversarial rhetoric has done an outstanding job of making things better so far.
My main point in this original post was simply to present a case that less people would feel comfortable defending, to illustrate a real and important point - that the internet does make certain kinds of behavior that the vast majority consider absolutely unnacceptable (i.e. looking at pictures of children being sexually abused)much easier to commit. And if we try to answer this with the rather American assertion of free speech uber alles then the outrage of the many over a very select set of topics will force us into the kind of one-size-fits all, one-world police state bullshit that is already coming out of the Hague. I think this problem needs a complex solution where we determine what content needs to be universally banned from the web (I disagree that you couldn't restrict something like kiddie porn without ruining the "nature of the web..." and in fact not doing so may end up saddling us with a much more invasive solution in the end) and determining how liability is assigned and distributed in a country where someone does something illegal in their country/community on the internet.
1. Start with a marginal point of view that is not widely recognized or embraced.
2. Create a media entity to espouse this point of view.
3. Discover that you can not match the power, scope or reach of organizations that present mainstream, broadly embraced points of view.
4. Blame the corporate policies of those organizations (crafting a product that appeals across a very broad base of consumers) for the failure of your media enterprise to attract a broad base of consumers.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a spare minute for most mainstream media. But nobody puts a gun to anyone's head and makes them buy a copy of Details. Not one of the 30 million idiots watching Survivor was strapped down in their easy chairs with clockwork orange clips holding their eyes open. Mainstream media has a singular goal and mission and that is to make a select group of people rich. This essay's whining pessimism does not contribute an iota of help or good advice as to how to succesfully make media in a different way (and it also doesn't provide much of a justification for why anyone should bother... If Katz is pining for a world where you could get a magazine full of essays like this... well, I imagine someone could pick up something of that variety in the flaming depths of HELL).
I don't necessarily have any answers either, but here's at least a few rational starting points:
1. If you want to present a more marginal point of view you have to give up, at least at the onset, on having mainstream level success. This is simple math. If you are not producing what people are accustomed to consuming, you have to expect a longer and harder path to an ultimately more modest destination.
2. If you want to eventually acheive success on the order of magnitude of mainstream media, you are going to have to aggresively lobby for new consumers and somehow convince them to give your "weird" viewpoint some of their time. That means it has to be entertaining, accessible, created in a style that appeals over a broader range of intellects and educations, and doesn't immediately attack or insult people who do not yet necessarily see your point yet.
3. You have to accept, connect and foster your natural community. The real question of this problem is, how do you stop preaching to the choir and get a broader audience? It isn't easy, and paradoxically, you have to first make sure you are taking advantage of AND taking care of the audience you can naturally get - people that share your viewpoint. Slashdot succeeds for this reason, and yet it attracts a lot of marginal types like me - a lapsed chemist who hasn't programmed a computer since 1992. How? By having a big enough basis of support in its core users (computer nerds and open source types) to have acheived the financial backing sufficent to present a broader viewpoint that appeals to a bigger crowd.
We need to stop whining about big business and realize that there is only one remedy, which is sucessfully selling the alternative in the common market. There is no legislation, no magic technology that will make rich people stop wanting to get richer. They are not the problem. We, the majority, work for them, buy from them, and vote for the politicians bought by them, and for that we have noone to blame but ourselves. Now, certainly the working family of four teetering on the poverty line is hard pressed to find the time and resources to "fight the power." But if you own a computer and have enough free time to read a Jon Katz essay and a crazy long response like this...
Then you have enough resources to change the world. So quit whining about the big bully that's stealing your lunch and go learn some kung fu.
" "The result will be consumer devices that are more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue super-computer, operate at low power and access the broadband internet at ultra-high speeds," the statement added."
It's really great to see that all of IBM's investments in basic research in naoscale technologies will find their apotheosis in making Lara Crofts boobs jiggle EXACTLY like Angelina Jolie's. God I can't wait for the future to be here.
A big myth is that auto manufacturers don't want to develop this kind of technology. ALL major manufacturers are experimenting and researching in these arenas. Why? Because these vehicles will obsolete all existing internal-combustion vehicles by giving superior performance, reliability, and versatility in design, not just better mileage and lower emissions.
On the other hand, infrastructure for the internal combustion engine is in place, it is a stable and well understood technology, and car companies are, like most companies, completely beholden to the greed of their shareholders, and subsequently tied to their quarterly bottom lines with a very short leash. So the transition will go slowly unless regulatory pressures or government incentives encourage a faster pace. Considering how many idiots choose to buy giant SUVs and for all intents and purposes drive two cars worth of gas, road wear and emissions for their commute, one can assume the transition will not be consumer driven.
Yahoo cares because they still operate in France, and can still be sued, shut down or fined in France. Yahoo is fighting this but the root problem is the borderlessness of the Web.
Imagine some banana republic sets up a data haven and says, kiddie porn isn't illegal in Gamboonia. The question is, can the US (and decent people everywhere) shut the site down? Should we be able to? Is it functonally possible to prevent US citizens from accessing the proscribed content, and if not who's problem is that? Here in the USA we think it's okay to collect Nazi memorabilia. France doesn't agree and they want to make it the content provider's problem to keep French people from accessing the proscribed materials. The problem is, if they can't (and they probably can't) then France ends up getting to dictate policy to the rest of the world.
Yahoo is just trying to keep it's customers happy while avoiding tangling with foreign law. If you're doing business with/in a country you have to deal with their laws even if they are disparate from you home country's laws.
PVRs potentially allow time-shifting, circumvention of advertisements, and storage of programs, which interferes with the entertainment industries' goal of making all entertainment only available on a pay-to-play basis, and the advertisers' goal of keeping asses in seats for these important messages from our sponsors.
So I think that an increasing interest in DIY PVRs is inevitable. Commercial services like Tivo are constantly going to be struggling to maintain the good will of content providers while still giving the customer what they want... Current trends make it clear that the former is more critical to them than the latter (an irate customer is far less likely to bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit).
Making a computer into the perfect PVR is a trend that will be impossible to stop but keep a close eye on the law because if experience tells true the entertainment concerns will lobby successfully to make this illegal - probably by exploiting the transition to digital television to introduce proprietary digital video standards and then using DMCA (or similar legislation) to make playing the television signal through anything but a legal, industry-approved playback device a case of "illegal circumvention." The approved devices will of course be designed to make splitting an analog signal out difficult (hard to make this illegal in the US due to fair use precedents), and splitting a digital signal out very difficult and illegal to boot.
Of course this won't stop a lot of people but they will be technical criminals of the cable thief variety which will keep most mainstream viewers out of the homegrown PVR market. For the average consumer, pay-to-play, with at best a Tivo-type device with its teeth pulled (limited memory, limited commercial circumvention, limited storage time) or a digital cable box with whatever pay-per features will be the norm. Of course, 30 million idiots watched Survivor so most of you will not notice your choices slipping away.
Certainly there is going to be a brisk trade in pirate video from teevee just like there is a trade in MP3s, but any activity of this type will be prey to the Napster effect: if you are big enough to be exhaustive in your offerings, organized enough to provide a real content service, and easy enough to use and find that a reasonable percentage of consumers will be able to get at and play what is offered, then you're going to get sued or busted for violating copyrights on a massive scale, particularly if you're charging people for it. If it's invisible to entertainment companies and the law, it's also gonna be invisible to most individuals.
I'd like to think that the principle of fair use will overcome and crap legislation like the DMCA will be struck down, but I have little hope. Maybe it's time to start thinking about alternative ways to PRODUCE teevee, not just how we'll be allowed to CONSUME it.
Looking back through your posts I'm having trouble figuring out what exactly you're trying toget across, aside from the fact that you're more than willing to just invent information to support your case (hint: when your forum is Slashdot, and the subject is Linux, inventing facts does NOT support your case).
So what is your point, WW? That corporations try to serve their self-interest, and often use deceptive spin to make it seem like their only objective is to serve their customers? Geez, maybe you should be hitting up the NY Times with this breaking news instead of a podunk operation like Slashdot.
No, I see from the more recent post that your real point is the vast conspiracy of lies that is America. Fake Spies! JFK! Waco! Digital Television Recorder Standards! Is there no end to the sneaky tactics of our alien overlords?!
There are plenty of intelligent people who look at the evidence of what happened at Waco and conclude that the FBI and ATF bear some degree (how much is arguable, I don't feel qualified to argue an opinion) of the responsibility of the deaths of the Davidians. Plenty of reasonable souls believe that McVeigh was supported in his terroristic attack and chose to maintain the assertion that he acted alone because of his desires to protect accomplices and aggrandize himself. Shit goes on in this world, there is corruption all over the place. But to carry this assertion forward as you do and use it to justify unproven and unsupported claims about the corporate practices of particular companies is not valid reasoning. A blanket assumption of corruption and conspiracy about all things corporate or government is just as misleading as the blanket assumption of good will and innocence you seem to be attributing to anyone who disagrees with you.
The issue and difference is that the basic, copyright-protected information conatined in a web page's content is not altered. WHile a company like Tivo might get sued over adding analogous metacontent to teevee, I strongly disagree that it would be a valid lawsuit and if they had the money & inclination to fight it I think they would win. There is NO reason why I should not be allowed to use any technology to alter media I am consuming in any way I want.
I don't know what you're talking about with the Replay TV but to my knowledge there has been no sucessful attempt to prevent people from using playback technologies to circumvent commercials. There won't be. You can't force people to consume media in a particular way. You can't force people to stay and watch commercials. They can go to the kitchen or the bathroom and, with appropriate technology, just jump right over them. This is all legit, all protected by fair use.
Imagine I hacked my teevee so I had a window over regular content that allowed me to engage in an internet chat with a friend, where we discussed the program we were both watching. By your reasoning this would be illegal - simply because I had integrated the display of my "content" over the copyright protected teevee content. I think our real beef is with the fact that M$'s monopolistic OS dominance has allowed them to make IE virtually the default browser for non-AOL internet consumers, and that you fear (rightly, I would guess) that the metacontent they choose to layer over the internet will be self-serving corporate garbage. So? support an alternative browser project like Mozilla and get over it. This is not illegal.
I'm quite the opposite of a fan of Microsoft but the way people are talking about this bothers me. The pervasive attitude that this is altering web pages or somehow violating the rights of those who create web content is false and dangerous. One thing I do not want is to be told that I should not be allowed to use any technology to alter any electronic media I consume in any way I want. I don't have the right to alter the basic information that a particular person has a copyright on, and they don't have the right to insist that I consume their content in a particular way. Now it so happens I don't particularly want Microsoft's metadirectory of the content of what I surf on the web, so I won't consume this feature. That's all the protection I need.
There is something to the argument that by making this metadirectory the default, Microsoft is forcing this down people's throats. But the issue and problem in this case is not the smart tags - it's just the sameold same old of Microsoft's OS Monopoly and the attendant prevalence of Explorer. Want a solution to this problem? Find another browser. Microsoft isn't doing anything wrong.
I think it's worth noting that this article cuts a very big swath through a complicated issue without much apparent justification. The evidence that there's "no such thing" as SRIs is basically anectdotal, with the exception of the one rather small and unscientific study at Mayo. I think it's a little irresponsible to then go and attribute it all to "hysteria." Yes, some impressive names and titles express the same opinion. But this is not real data, not real science.
On the other hand, I have witnessed first hand, with conditions from tinnitis to panic attacks, how incredibly resistant people are to the idea that their ailments stem from their neorological physiology, rather than some more esoteric doohickey in the elbow, ear or heart. So all of you writing in to say "it is TOO real!" aren't demonstrating anything either.
Sounds like some geek nerd wrote an article about how games should be more serious. Allow me to point out a few realities while I try to clear the cloying stench of self-righteousness from my nostrils:
1) E3 is a gaming expo. It's gaming nerd central. Of course it is going to be appealing not to the tiny, erudite minority but to the geek boy majority. This guy just wants to believe that he can be a big enough geek that he shows up at huge nerd-o-ramas like E3 and yet expect all the other nerds to conform his "sensitive adult guy" prude mores.
2) Look at games like Myst. 95% of science fiction & fantasy books have a sex act in the first 15 pages to keep the teen boy audience hooked. Games, sci-fi, fantasy, RPGs have a core audience of guys. It doesn't mean there isn't a solid audience for thoughtful, "deep" games with a mature sensibility. But don't expect the industry to abandon skin and gore: the dog wags the tail, dumbass.
"Games should be treated as art:" there's room for artfulness in anything. And there's a big ol' economy of scale and typical corporate practices black hole sucking everything from cars to, well, hamburger into being treated like hamburger. But they call them GAMES, not ULTRA-SERIOUS PURSUITS, for a reason - they're supposed to be fun. This article sucked and this guy needs to shut up and play some Q-bert.
I have to imagine that it would take little more than it does in the USA to make this perfectly above-board and legal - that is, someone going to the trouble of registering some minimal paperwork and actually starting a legitimate church of Jedi. I think the point of the government's protest is the census is a tool to collect legitimate information about the population, it is not a vehicle for people to express what is essentially an opinion about religion and an homage to a movie series. And they're combatting misinformation - the idea that some kind of magic number of respondents will make Jedi legitimate in the eyes of the government. Of course, typical of governments they've gone overboard and made stupid threats. But really - it isn't as if they would or could prevent anyone from starting a legitimate, legal, state-recognized Church of Jedi. Look at the Universal Life Church, after all - http://www.ulc.org/ulchq/ - I know several people who have received their non-denominational ordination, filed the appropriate papers, and are now able to perform legal weddings etc. So, who's going to start the International Universal Church of Jedi? (I'm a Lutheran or, you know, I'd do it myself. Plus my midichlorian count is too low).
Anybody ever hear this one in a copllege psychology class? Some researchers recorded the poem "Jabberwocky" and then pored over the recording played backwards, looking for the chance occurrence of what sounded like phrases of sensible English. Sure enough they found some, one of the more notable being "I saw a girl with a weasel in her mouth."
I was in a class where they demonstrated this - we were played a relevant section backwards without being told what we were supposed to be able to hear. It sounded like gibberish. Then we were told what the identified phrase was, and heard the same recording (no enhancement) again. Sure enough - "I saw a girl with a weasel in her mouth." A bit garbled but I HEARD it.
The simple suggestion of the words was enough to make us hear a recognizable semblance of the phrase in what was really just random noises. Now, I can't look at that picture of a bunch of rocks without seeing Neffertiti (I thought she came back as Brendon Fraser's wife?) but, c'mon - she ain't really there. With a big enough field of relatively random information, anyone with sufficient motivation can find apparently meaningful artifacts that anyone can perceive with the help of a little suggestion.
Re:Nothing much has changed
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""Deserve"? I don't know, that's not my call, that's up to the board and the stockholders."
An excellent way to avoid the problem of expressing an opinion of your own. But just for giggle, tell me: do YOU think CEO salaries should grow at a 4.5X faster rate than profits? At a 17X faster rate than average employee compensation? I promise not to impose your third part standard of fairness on anyone. I'm just curious as to your opinion, as you seem so quick to defend CEO salaries.
"Using the word "deserve" in this context implies that there should be some 3rd-party standard of "fairness"."
It could be argued that 3rd-party standards of fairness are what made this country great and are indeed the basis of our constitution and system of justice. I would note that putting the word "fairness" in quotation marks does not invalidate it as a meaningful concept.
But in any event, you miss my point. I support no outside imposition of an external standard of comparative executive versus non-executive pay. I offered these facts about disparities in compensation as context for people to consider whether there is a reasonable case and justification for unionization for the purpose of collective bargaining. To make this determination individuals must decide, among other things, whether they think they are getting a fair deal, even though in doing so they run the risk of imposing a third party standard of fairness on reality, although we all know that the Market should really be used as the baseline for fairness. I would argue that by the same philosophy that a CEO has the right to lobby for his value to a company, so too do other employees. But employees at lower levels are hard pressed to make their individual voices heard and so it makes sense for them to seek methods to act collectively.
No doubt shareholders (overwhelmingly represented by the richest 1 percent of the world population)and boards of directors would consider this advice to be "kibitzing." But it's not them I'm giving the advice to, so their judgement of whether it is wanted or useful is not really germane.
"I tend to interpret the phrase "level the playing field" as "bend over, here it comes again"."
A fascinating analogy (or is that a metaphor?). Exactly who are you suggesting is being screwed by whom?
Re:Nothing much has changed
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"Corporate profits rose about 104 percent.
Perhaps that was due to the decisions that were made by all those expensives CEOs."
Yeah, and perhaps it was due to a rise in worker productivity, and perhaps it was due to unwise consumer credit spending and a generation of permissive parents empowering their materialistic children with too much cash. The point is, Monte, did those CEOs deserve to get their pay increased 4 and a half times faster than profits increased under their tender loving care? Did they contribute 17 times more to the bottom line than all the other workers did? Or were they simply the only ones in the position to really lobby for their own self interests?
Re:Nothing much has changed
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I'm not saying, and I think that few would argue, that the guy sweeping the factory floor should get the same as the CEO. Nor am I saying that CEO's should not be rewarded for creating profits, although I would point out that there are tons of examples of CEO's being rewarded for gross mismanagement.
I am saying that CEO getting pay increases nearly 4.5 times the rate of growth in profits is clearly out of line. I am also saying that considering that the average worker starts out with a much, much lower baseline pay, the fact that CEO compensation increased at a rate over 17 times that of workers demonstrates a real inequity.
Am I saying that CEOs are getting paid too much, more than they deserve and more than they're worth? Hell yes.
Nothing much has changed
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I'm sure this will be a humdinger of a discussion on the evils of unions versus the glories of collective bargaining.
Here's a little data to consider in the context of this discussion:
Between 1990 and 1998, overall inflation was about 22.5 percent.
Average worker (non-executive) pay increased by about 28 percent (minus inflation, natch).
Corporate profits rose about 104 percent.
The S&P Index rose 224 percent (yes, we all know that's in the tank now).
And CEO compensation?
Well, that rose about 481 percent.
Unions are far from perfect institutions. Like any organization they are prone to take on a life of their own. Like any nexus of power they can acquire nasty relationships with nasty people.
But the fact remains that there is still plenty of room for collective bargaining on the parts of non-executive workers. It's fairly clear who's really reaping the awards under the current power structures.
Source: 1998 Executive Excess report, United for a Fair Economy and Institute for Policy Studies,
Slashdot Mirror
It is this EULA that is truly viral - as soon as you click it you agree to put ridiculous and unwarranted restrictions on your ability to use the tools you want. Take this shit seriously - this is balls out, anti-competitive, monopolistic tactics.
THANK YOU
"Spend it's billion dollar defense network spying on the little guy?!" Come on. Obviously the "government" did not say "we think this guy is going to commit insurance fraud, let's take pictures of his fields now and make sure he plowed them!" It's clear these pictures were taken as part of routine sweeps and later archives were pulled to check the facts. Agriculture and insurance and all the rest are complex and controversial issues without question, but presuming the facts are right, these guys were breaking the law in a way that would hurt honest farmers (by driving up the base cost of providing insurance). In the end insurance fraud costs everyone money at the benefit of a few crooks.
This and other knee-jerk, simplistic assertions ("the greens in CA successfully killed off electricity production," "using GMO as an excuse for nationalistic crop protection" - yeah, that's the whole story on these huge issues) unfortunately interfere with a generally sound assessment of problems with agriculture in this world, and your VERY good, relevant and timely point about supporting local agriculture. Many farms, particularly organic farms (so you can wait for REAL science on GMO rather than taking GMO-dependent industries' word on safety, and save the productivity of our limited soil resources to boot - it's been proven that conventional agricultural processes are destroying the value of topsoil, while organic processes can actually improve it) offer great deals on shares, where you can get fresh vegetables delivered often right to your door throughout the growing season. The added benefit is that they're usually much fresher, tastier and more gently handled than the mega-mart's "fresh" produce.
I disagree. First off, "you" are not being watched in this case - Great big giant pieces of land are. Not very personal, and in my opinion the Big Brother analogy is off base.
And if you were an HONEST farmer, this kind of thing would be to your advantage - crop insurance fraud end up costing every farmer money in increased premiums. When farmers experience catastrophic crop loss they NEED that insurance to survice economically. Fraud means higher premiums, lower profits for farmers, more expensive agricultural commodities for everyone, including you.
I'm no lover of government or insurance companies but I think it is in every honest person's interest that we can use existing technologies (these things are going to be taking pictures whether they're used for these purposes or not) to prevent things like insurance fraud.
Something that I think is worth considering, particularly for all you moral purists out there who are snootily insisting that this meaningless little business should have held the line and stood on principles, is that "X-Box" is a stupid name for a video game console and an even stupider name for a vaguely defined tech company. This is probably one of the best business decisions these people ever made...
The exciting thing about the internet, or even better simply networked computers in general, is this potential to blur the line between a broadcast and a personal conversation. The former aspect gives communication scope, power, and a life beyond the individual. The latter is a defense against government and corporate intrusion, and the homogenizing influence of broadcast media.
The point made by Chris that I most want to reiterate is that yes, Virginia, it CAN happen here too. Keep a hawks eye on any legislation that aims its rhetoric at obscenity on the internet, cracking and electronic intrusion, surveillance and terrorism. This is where the enemies of freedom will most likely attack our freedom to use this communication tool with the full protection of the first amendment and exploiting as much reach and scope as we can afford to control.
And a nice list of examples of actions an individual can take, too. It all seems like little things, but remember - big bastards like Microsoft would not be alternately belittling and demonizing stuff like open source if it wasn't such a danger to them.
I would love to hear one of these free market advocates justify what the loosening of restraints on station ownership has done to the world of commercial radio, but I doubt I will. Chris, I've saved your web link for later perusal as I am a songwriter and singer. Since you've given an e-mail I'd like to touch base with you perhaps about projects in self-publishing and internet radio I and friends are working on. Thanks for a lively discussion.
There's nothing wrong with your facts - Other than your assumption, based on your obviously cursory asessment of what I actually said, that I don't understand the nature of the media environment in today's world. Yes, I am fully aware of the effects of the extension of copyright protections beyond the lifetime of individual creators, the overturning of rules preventing the ownership of large numbers of media outlets that made vile behemoths like Clear Channel possible, the dissapearance of the principle of separating content production from content distribution, the increasing consolidation of print and electronic media under the vast umbrellas of a few profit-driven corporate machines, and all the other forces consolidating mass media.
There is nothing in what I wrote to suggest that I'm not aware of these situations nor that I think the current media state is a good thing (I don't) nor that I don't believe the internet is in danger of a similar fate.
The use of the phrase "common market" was ill-chosen and obviously led you to the assumption that I'm advocating the viewpoint that the international wealth transfer system some laughingly refer to as a "free" market will insure parity in the media environment, and that I am against regulation because it will interfere with this market working correctly. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I am suggesting is that we have no choice but to take responsibility for creating alternatives and that we cannot rely on government (as it currently exists) or merely complaining about Big Business to remedy the situation. Our political leaders, corrupted by massive infusions of cash from the international cartels of shareholders that own the major multinationals, leashed to the lowest common denominator standards that create elections like our most recent presidential race (half the voters completely polarized between two mediocre candidates, the other half too sunk in self-involvement and apathy to even vote, are unable to do anything to stop the trends in media. And the businesses are owned by the wealthy and operated solely for their profit - we'll find no remedy there. Moreover, the succeed by virtue of the fact that they SELL their product. And while I fully agree that they succeed by virtue of an unfair advantage, reality is that they do succeed - they get people to consume their products (and don't tell me there are no alternatives - I haven't listed to a cumulative hour of commercial radio in the last five years).
We have to do it ourselves and we have to start in the context of the voices and venues we have. No, I can't start a major radio station. My voice here on little slashdot may be small, but look - it started this discussion. What I'm saying is that "magazines" like Feed and Suck failed by trying essentially to emulate both the methods and goals of corporatized media - and so failed by design. Big media is the way it is because of where it comes from, how it's created, and what it's made for. Small media has to strive to be something different, made in a different way, and for different purposes. We have to look at the models of things that work, not bemoan the fates of what didn't (Though we should learn from these fates).
I don't have the answers - I'm looking for them. I put it to you: what are your solutions for the problems you elucidate? You do a great job of painting a bleak picture, which I do NOT disagree with (despite my naivety, ignorance, and childishness). Yet despite your appeal to reality versus theory, you offer no solutions, no advice for going forward.
I would honestly (meaning literally honestly, not sarcastically honestly) like to hear your thoughts on how we can realistically change this situation - given the tools we actually possess right now. It seems like so many understand what's wrong, but don't know what to do about it - and you clearly understand (as so few do) that just voting for one of the two fat-cat approved political alternatives is not gonna make the nut. But we DO have a communication system in the internet which is fundamentally different from broadcast media yet which has potentially much greater power, and where as you point out we still have a chance to stake out standards that support a more diverse new media. But we need to get our heads together and figure out how.
Or perhaps you'd rather browse what I've written, stuff my complex opinions into some tiny box of whatever dogma you find particularly odious, and lightly insult me a bit - because God knows the politics of adversarial rhetoric has done an outstanding job of making things better so far.
My main point in this original post was simply to present a case that less people would feel comfortable defending, to illustrate a real and important point - that the internet does make certain kinds of behavior that the vast majority consider absolutely unnacceptable (i.e. looking at pictures of children being sexually abused)much easier to commit. And if we try to answer this with the rather American assertion of free speech uber alles then the outrage of the many over a very select set of topics will force us into the kind of one-size-fits all, one-world police state bullshit that is already coming out of the Hague. I think this problem needs a complex solution where we determine what content needs to be universally banned from the web (I disagree that you couldn't restrict something like kiddie porn without ruining the "nature of the web..." and in fact not doing so may end up saddling us with a much more invasive solution in the end) and determining how liability is assigned and distributed in a country where someone does something illegal in their country/community on the internet.
2. Create a media entity to espouse this point of view.
3. Discover that you can not match the power, scope or reach of organizations that present mainstream, broadly embraced points of view.
4. Blame the corporate policies of those organizations (crafting a product that appeals across a very broad base of consumers) for the failure of your media enterprise to attract a broad base of consumers.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a spare minute for most mainstream media. But nobody puts a gun to anyone's head and makes them buy a copy of Details. Not one of the 30 million idiots watching Survivor was strapped down in their easy chairs with clockwork orange clips holding their eyes open. Mainstream media has a singular goal and mission and that is to make a select group of people rich. This essay's whining pessimism does not contribute an iota of help or good advice as to how to succesfully make media in a different way (and it also doesn't provide much of a justification for why anyone should bother... If Katz is pining for a world where you could get a magazine full of essays like this... well, I imagine someone could pick up something of that variety in the flaming depths of HELL).
I don't necessarily have any answers either, but here's at least a few rational starting points:
1. If you want to present a more marginal point of view you have to give up, at least at the onset, on having mainstream level success. This is simple math. If you are not producing what people are accustomed to consuming, you have to expect a longer and harder path to an ultimately more modest destination.
2. If you want to eventually acheive success on the order of magnitude of mainstream media, you are going to have to aggresively lobby for new consumers and somehow convince them to give your "weird" viewpoint some of their time. That means it has to be entertaining, accessible, created in a style that appeals over a broader range of intellects and educations, and doesn't immediately attack or insult people who do not yet necessarily see your point yet.
3. You have to accept, connect and foster your natural community. The real question of this problem is, how do you stop preaching to the choir and get a broader audience? It isn't easy, and paradoxically, you have to first make sure you are taking advantage of AND taking care of the audience you can naturally get - people that share your viewpoint. Slashdot succeeds for this reason, and yet it attracts a lot of marginal types like me - a lapsed chemist who hasn't programmed a computer since 1992. How? By having a big enough basis of support in its core users (computer nerds and open source types) to have acheived the financial backing sufficent to present a broader viewpoint that appeals to a bigger crowd.
We need to stop whining about big business and realize that there is only one remedy, which is sucessfully selling the alternative in the common market. There is no legislation, no magic technology that will make rich people stop wanting to get richer. They are not the problem. We, the majority, work for them, buy from them, and vote for the politicians bought by them, and for that we have noone to blame but ourselves. Now, certainly the working family of four teetering on the poverty line is hard pressed to find the time and resources to "fight the power." But if you own a computer and have enough free time to read a Jon Katz essay and a crazy long response like this...
Then you have enough resources to change the world. So quit whining about the big bully that's stealing your lunch and go learn some kung fu.
"UNIVAC I (UNIversal Automatic Computer)..."
Shouldn't that be UNIVersal Automatic Computer?
Otherwise, you know, it would be UNIAC
" "The result will be consumer devices that are more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue super-computer, operate at low power and access the broadband internet at ultra-high speeds," the statement added."
It's really great to see that all of IBM's investments in basic research in naoscale technologies will find their apotheosis in making Lara Crofts boobs jiggle EXACTLY like Angelina Jolie's. God I can't wait for the future to be here.
On the other hand, infrastructure for the internal combustion engine is in place, it is a stable and well understood technology, and car companies are, like most companies, completely beholden to the greed of their shareholders, and subsequently tied to their quarterly bottom lines with a very short leash. So the transition will go slowly unless regulatory pressures or government incentives encourage a faster pace. Considering how many idiots choose to buy giant SUVs and for all intents and purposes drive two cars worth of gas, road wear and emissions for their commute, one can assume the transition will not be consumer driven.
Imagine some banana republic sets up a data haven and says, kiddie porn isn't illegal in Gamboonia. The question is, can the US (and decent people everywhere) shut the site down? Should we be able to? Is it functonally possible to prevent US citizens from accessing the proscribed content, and if not who's problem is that? Here in the USA we think it's okay to collect Nazi memorabilia. France doesn't agree and they want to make it the content provider's problem to keep French people from accessing the proscribed materials. The problem is, if they can't (and they probably can't) then France ends up getting to dictate policy to the rest of the world.
Yahoo is just trying to keep it's customers happy while avoiding tangling with foreign law. If you're doing business with/in a country you have to deal with their laws even if they are disparate from you home country's laws.
So I think that an increasing interest in DIY PVRs is inevitable. Commercial services like Tivo are constantly going to be struggling to maintain the good will of content providers while still giving the customer what they want... Current trends make it clear that the former is more critical to them than the latter (an irate customer is far less likely to bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit).
Making a computer into the perfect PVR is a trend that will be impossible to stop but keep a close eye on the law because if experience tells true the entertainment concerns will lobby successfully to make this illegal - probably by exploiting the transition to digital television to introduce proprietary digital video standards and then using DMCA (or similar legislation) to make playing the television signal through anything but a legal, industry-approved playback device a case of "illegal circumvention." The approved devices will of course be designed to make splitting an analog signal out difficult (hard to make this illegal in the US due to fair use precedents), and splitting a digital signal out very difficult and illegal to boot.
Of course this won't stop a lot of people but they will be technical criminals of the cable thief variety which will keep most mainstream viewers out of the homegrown PVR market. For the average consumer, pay-to-play, with at best a Tivo-type device with its teeth pulled (limited memory, limited commercial circumvention, limited storage time) or a digital cable box with whatever pay-per features will be the norm. Of course, 30 million idiots watched Survivor so most of you will not notice your choices slipping away.
Certainly there is going to be a brisk trade in pirate video from teevee just like there is a trade in MP3s, but any activity of this type will be prey to the Napster effect: if you are big enough to be exhaustive in your offerings, organized enough to provide a real content service, and easy enough to use and find that a reasonable percentage of consumers will be able to get at and play what is offered, then you're going to get sued or busted for violating copyrights on a massive scale, particularly if you're charging people for it. If it's invisible to entertainment companies and the law, it's also gonna be invisible to most individuals.
I'd like to think that the principle of fair use will overcome and crap legislation like the DMCA will be struck down, but I have little hope. Maybe it's time to start thinking about alternative ways to PRODUCE teevee, not just how we'll be allowed to CONSUME it.
Looking back through your posts I'm having trouble figuring out what exactly you're trying toget across, aside from the fact that you're more than willing to just invent information to support your case (hint: when your forum is Slashdot, and the subject is Linux, inventing facts does NOT support your case).
So what is your point, WW? That corporations try to serve their self-interest, and often use deceptive spin to make it seem like their only objective is to serve their customers? Geez, maybe you should be hitting up the NY Times with this breaking news instead of a podunk operation like Slashdot.
No, I see from the more recent post that your real point is the vast conspiracy of lies that is America. Fake Spies! JFK! Waco! Digital Television Recorder Standards! Is there no end to the sneaky tactics of our alien overlords?!
There are plenty of intelligent people who look at the evidence of what happened at Waco and conclude that the FBI and ATF bear some degree (how much is arguable, I don't feel qualified to argue an opinion) of the responsibility of the deaths of the Davidians. Plenty of reasonable souls believe that McVeigh was supported in his terroristic attack and chose to maintain the assertion that he acted alone because of his desires to protect accomplices and aggrandize himself. Shit goes on in this world, there is corruption all over the place. But to carry this assertion forward as you do and use it to justify unproven and unsupported claims about the corporate practices of particular companies is not valid reasoning. A blanket assumption of corruption and conspiracy about all things corporate or government is just as misleading as the blanket assumption of good will and innocence you seem to be attributing to anyone who disagrees with you.
I don't know what you're talking about with the Replay TV but to my knowledge there has been no sucessful attempt to prevent people from using playback technologies to circumvent commercials. There won't be. You can't force people to consume media in a particular way. You can't force people to stay and watch commercials. They can go to the kitchen or the bathroom and, with appropriate technology, just jump right over them. This is all legit, all protected by fair use.
Imagine I hacked my teevee so I had a window over regular content that allowed me to engage in an internet chat with a friend, where we discussed the program we were both watching. By your reasoning this would be illegal - simply because I had integrated the display of my "content" over the copyright protected teevee content. I think our real beef is with the fact that M$'s monopolistic OS dominance has allowed them to make IE virtually the default browser for non-AOL internet consumers, and that you fear (rightly, I would guess) that the metacontent they choose to layer over the internet will be self-serving corporate garbage. So? support an alternative browser project like Mozilla and get over it. This is not illegal.
There is something to the argument that by making this metadirectory the default, Microsoft is forcing this down people's throats. But the issue and problem in this case is not the smart tags - it's just the sameold same old of Microsoft's OS Monopoly and the attendant prevalence of Explorer. Want a solution to this problem? Find another browser. Microsoft isn't doing anything wrong.
I think it's worth noting that this article cuts a very big swath through a complicated issue without much apparent justification. The evidence that there's "no such thing" as SRIs is basically anectdotal, with the exception of the one rather small and unscientific study at Mayo. I think it's a little irresponsible to then go and attribute it all to "hysteria." Yes, some impressive names and titles express the same opinion. But this is not real data, not real science. On the other hand, I have witnessed first hand, with conditions from tinnitis to panic attacks, how incredibly resistant people are to the idea that their ailments stem from their neorological physiology, rather than some more esoteric doohickey in the elbow, ear or heart. So all of you writing in to say "it is TOO real!" aren't demonstrating anything either.
1) E3 is a gaming expo. It's gaming nerd central. Of course it is going to be appealing not to the tiny, erudite minority but to the geek boy majority. This guy just wants to believe that he can be a big enough geek that he shows up at huge nerd-o-ramas like E3 and yet expect all the other nerds to conform his "sensitive adult guy" prude mores.
2) Look at games like Myst. 95% of science fiction & fantasy books have a sex act in the first 15 pages to keep the teen boy audience hooked. Games, sci-fi, fantasy, RPGs have a core audience of guys. It doesn't mean there isn't a solid audience for thoughtful, "deep" games with a mature sensibility. But don't expect the industry to abandon skin and gore: the dog wags the tail, dumbass.
"Games should be treated as art:" there's room for artfulness in anything. And there's a big ol' economy of scale and typical corporate practices black hole sucking everything from cars to, well, hamburger into being treated like hamburger. But they call them GAMES, not ULTRA-SERIOUS PURSUITS, for a reason - they're supposed to be fun. This article sucked and this guy needs to shut up and play some Q-bert.
I have to imagine that it would take little more than it does in the USA to make this perfectly above-board and legal - that is, someone going to the trouble of registering some minimal paperwork and actually starting a legitimate church of Jedi. I think the point of the government's protest is the census is a tool to collect legitimate information about the population, it is not a vehicle for people to express what is essentially an opinion about religion and an homage to a movie series. And they're combatting misinformation - the idea that some kind of magic number of respondents will make Jedi legitimate in the eyes of the government. Of course, typical of governments they've gone overboard and made stupid threats. But really - it isn't as if they would or could prevent anyone from starting a legitimate, legal, state-recognized Church of Jedi. Look at the Universal Life Church, after all - http://www.ulc.org/ulchq/ - I know several people who have received their non-denominational ordination, filed the appropriate papers, and are now able to perform legal weddings etc. So, who's going to start the International Universal Church of Jedi? (I'm a Lutheran or, you know, I'd do it myself. Plus my midichlorian count is too low).
I was in a class where they demonstrated this - we were played a relevant section backwards without being told what we were supposed to be able to hear. It sounded like gibberish. Then we were told what the identified phrase was, and heard the same recording (no enhancement) again. Sure enough - "I saw a girl with a weasel in her mouth." A bit garbled but I HEARD it.
The simple suggestion of the words was enough to make us hear a recognizable semblance of the phrase in what was really just random noises. Now, I can't look at that picture of a bunch of rocks without seeing Neffertiti (I thought she came back as Brendon Fraser's wife?) but, c'mon - she ain't really there. With a big enough field of relatively random information, anyone with sufficient motivation can find apparently meaningful artifacts that anyone can perceive with the help of a little suggestion.
An excellent way to avoid the problem of expressing an opinion of your own. But just for giggle, tell me: do YOU think CEO salaries should grow at a 4.5X faster rate than profits? At a 17X faster rate than average employee compensation? I promise not to impose your third part standard of fairness on anyone. I'm just curious as to your opinion, as you seem so quick to defend CEO salaries.
"Using the word "deserve" in this context implies that there should be some 3rd-party standard of "fairness"."
It could be argued that 3rd-party standards of fairness are what made this country great and are indeed the basis of our constitution and system of justice. I would note that putting the word "fairness" in quotation marks does not invalidate it as a meaningful concept.
But in any event, you miss my point. I support no outside imposition of an external standard of comparative executive versus non-executive pay. I offered these facts about disparities in compensation as context for people to consider whether there is a reasonable case and justification for unionization for the purpose of collective bargaining. To make this determination individuals must decide, among other things, whether they think they are getting a fair deal, even though in doing so they run the risk of imposing a third party standard of fairness on reality, although we all know that the Market should really be used as the baseline for fairness. I would argue that by the same philosophy that a CEO has the right to lobby for his value to a company, so too do other employees. But employees at lower levels are hard pressed to make their individual voices heard and so it makes sense for them to seek methods to act collectively.
No doubt shareholders (overwhelmingly represented by the richest 1 percent of the world population)and boards of directors would consider this advice to be "kibitzing." But it's not them I'm giving the advice to, so their judgement of whether it is wanted or useful is not really germane.
"I tend to interpret the phrase "level the playing field" as "bend over, here it comes again"."
A fascinating analogy (or is that a metaphor?). Exactly who are you suggesting is being screwed by whom?
Perhaps that was due to the decisions that were made by all those expensives CEOs."
Yeah, and perhaps it was due to a rise in worker productivity, and perhaps it was due to unwise consumer credit spending and a generation of permissive parents empowering their materialistic children with too much cash. The point is, Monte, did those CEOs deserve to get their pay increased 4 and a half times faster than profits increased under their tender loving care? Did they contribute 17 times more to the bottom line than all the other workers did? Or were they simply the only ones in the position to really lobby for their own self interests?
I am saying that CEO getting pay increases nearly 4.5 times the rate of growth in profits is clearly out of line. I am also saying that considering that the average worker starts out with a much, much lower baseline pay, the fact that CEO compensation increased at a rate over 17 times that of workers demonstrates a real inequity.
Am I saying that CEOs are getting paid too much, more than they deserve and more than they're worth? Hell yes.
Here's a little data to consider in the context of this discussion:
Between 1990 and 1998, overall inflation was about 22.5 percent.
Average worker (non-executive) pay increased by about 28 percent (minus inflation, natch).
Corporate profits rose about 104 percent.
The S&P Index rose 224 percent (yes, we all know that's in the tank now).
And CEO compensation?
Well, that rose about 481 percent.
Unions are far from perfect institutions. Like any organization they are prone to take on a life of their own. Like any nexus of power they can acquire nasty relationships with nasty people.
But the fact remains that there is still plenty of room for collective bargaining on the parts of non-executive workers. It's fairly clear who's really reaping the awards under the current power structures.
Source: 1998 Executive Excess report, United for a Fair Economy and Institute for Policy Studies,